By Kathy Hughes

Contributing Writer

Closed on Mondays? We have all become accustomed to doing our shopping, dining out, cultural, recreational activities 24/7, so it is surprising to show up at a restaurant only to find they are closed on Mondays.

Even locally, Monday closings were routine for many retail establishments not so long ago, while museums and beauty salons still follow this practice. Mondays are notoriously slow for businesses, and Monday closings allow employees who work on the weekend to have a break. Lately, when my guest and I went to a local, family-owned restaurant for dinner, we were greeted by a “Closed” sign on the door. Why? — It was Monday.

Beware, Monday closings are more common than you think, making Monday a bad choice to visit a museum, get a haircut or even go out to dinner. This is especially true when traveling out of the country. Since travel often occurs over three-day weekends, it is disappointing to have travelled miles from home to visit the sights, only to find closings on the final day of your trip.

Avoid being tripped up! Always check opening days and times when visiting out of town (or out of country), especially on holidays and Mondays. Leaving the best for last may not be a good idea. A few examples from my own disappointments will illustrate this point.

Museums are almost always closed on Mondays, even in cities here and abroad which are famous for their great museums, zoos, and galleries. New York, Washington, D.C., London and Rome are no exceptions. For instance, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is highly rated, but off the beaten path, so I had never been able to visit. A weekend visit to a friend in New York City provided a perfect opportunity, even though it required an intimidating subway trip across town. My friend had to work on Monday, so I ventured out on my own, anticipating a rewarding day. Instead, I found myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood where the museum was — “closed on Mondays” — so I had to turn around and go back. There were no other known attractions in the neighborhood.

My husband and I began our trip to the U.K. over Memorial Day weekend, starting out in London. Even though Memorial Day is not observed as such in Britain, it was a bank holiday. The English enjoy a practice called “bank holidays,” scheduled on random days of the year, often for no apparent reason. Not only the banks are closed — practically everything else as well, so we had to content ourselves sitting on a tour bus looking at closed museums, palaces and historical sites we had hoped to actually visit.

Most bank holidays fall on a Monday, a few on Friday, but can fall on any day of the week.

Continental Europe not only has unique holiday closings, as a rule, retail establishments, as well as museums and tourist sites can be closed on Sundays. Moreover, in many countries, especially in southern Europe, the lunch “hour” is usually the lunch two hours — if you check the hours, most places re-open at 2 p.m. (14 o’clock).

For instance, on a tight itinerary traveling in Spain, we had included a stop in Toledo to have lunch and to visit the famed cathedral — only to find it was closed until 2 p.m. For us, it was to be forever and it was crushing — we would never be back. The siesta is alive and well in Spain, Italy and southern France.

All told, we are reminded what is meant when it is said we live a fast paced life, where our needs, wants and pleasures can be fulfilled almost any time, on any day of the week. Due to the ubiquity of telephones, we have the ability to call ahead, because the rest of the world likes to take a break.